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Morissette was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the daughter of Georgia Mary Ann (née Feuerstein), a Hungarian-born teacher, and Alan Richard Morissette, a French-Canadian high school principal.[5] Morissette's parents were devout Catholics.[6] She has a twin brother, Wade, and an older brother, Chad. At six, she began playing the piano. In 1984, Morissette wrote her first song, "Fate Stay with Me," which she sent to a local folk singer, Lindsay Morgan, who recruited Morissette as her protégé.[7] Morissette released "Fate Stay with Me" as a single via a label she founded with Morgan. A limited number of copies were pressed, and it received little airplay.[7] In elementary school she was identified as gifted and attended St. Elizabeth's PGL (program for gifted learners). During her high school years, she attended Immaculata High School and Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa while continuing to pursue a career in the arts. In 1986, she was a cast regular on the CTV/Nickelodeon show, You Can't Do That on Television. In 1987, Morissette competed in the inaugural year of the Rising Star Talent Competition, an amateur contest held in Toronto at the Canadian National Exhibition.

At a New York City audition, Morissette landed a spot on Star Search, a U.S. talent competition on which she used the stage name of Alanis Nadine, her first and middle names. Morissette flew to Los Angeles to appear on the show, but lost after one round. In 1988, Morissette signed a publishing deal with MCA Publishing, which helped to fund her record deal with one of its independent subsidiary labels.[8]

In 1992, she released her second album, Now Is the Time, a ballad-driven record that featured less glitzy production than Alanis and contained more thoughtful lyrics.[7] Morissette wrote the songs with the album's producer, Leslie Howe, and Serge Côté. She said of the album, "people could go, 'Boo, hiss, hiss, this girl's like another Tiffany or whatever.' But the way I look at it ... people will like your next album if it's a suck-ass one."[10] As with Alanis, Now Is the Time was released only in Canada and produced three top forty singles—"An Emotion Away," the minor adult contemporary hit "No Apologies" and "(Change Is) Never a Waste of Time." It sold a little more than half the copies of her first album, however, and was a commercial failure.[7][12] With her two-album deal with MCA Records Canada complete, Morissette was left without a major label contract.

In 1993, after graduating from high school, Morissette moved from Ottawa to Toronto.[7] Eventually she met producer and songwriter Glen Ballard.[7] The two wrote and recorded Morissette's first internationally released album, Jagged Little Pill, and by the spring of 1995, she had signed a deal with Maverick Records.

Maverick Records released Jagged Little Pill internationally in 1995. The album was expected only to sell enough for Morissette to make a follow-up, but the situation changed quickly when a DJ from KROQ, an influential Los Angeles modern rock radio station, began playing "You Oughta Know," the album's first single.[8] The song instantly garnered attention for its scathing, explicit lyrics,[7] and a subsequent music video went into heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic.

After the success of "You Oughta Know," the album's other hit singles helped send Jagged Little Pill to the top of the charts. "All I Really Want" and "Hand In My Pocket" followed, but the fourth U.S. single, "Ironic," became Morissette's biggest hit. "You Learn" and "Head over Feet," the fifth and sixth singles, respectively, kept Jagged Little Pill in the top twenty on the Billboard 200 albums chart for more than a year. According to the RIAA, Jagged Little Pill is the best-selling international debut album by a female artist, with more than 16 million copies sold in the U.S.; it sold 33 million worldwide,[13] making it the third biggest selling album by a female artist, and the biggest selling debut album (though technically it is Alanis's international debut, not her first album) of all time.[14][15] Morissette's popularity grew significantly in Canada, where the album was certified twelve times platinum[9] and produced four RPM chart-toppers: "Hand In My Pocket," "Ironic," "You Learn," and "Head over Feet." The album was also a bestseller in Australia and the United Kingdom.[16][17]

Following the stressful tour, Morissette started practicing Iyengar Yoga for balancing, and after the last December 1996 show, she headed to India for six weeks, accompanied by her mother, two aunts and two female friends.[25]

Privately, the label hoped to sell a million copies of the album on initial release;[27] instead, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 469,000 copies—a record, at the time, for the highest first-week sales of an album by a female artist.[28] The wordy, personal lyrics on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie alienated many fans, and after the album sold considerably less than Jagged Little Pill, many labelled it an example of the sophomore jinx.[7][29] However, it received positive reviews, including a four-star review from Rolling Stone.[30] In Canada, it won the Juno Award for Best Album and was certified four times platinum.[9][31] "Thank U", the album's only major international hit single, was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance; the music video, which featured Morissette nude, generated mild controversy.[27][32] Morissette herself directed the videos for "Unsent" and "So Pure", which won, respectively, the MuchMusic Video Award for Best Director and the Juno Award for Video of the Year.[31][33] The "So Pure" video features actor Dash Mihok, with whom Morissette was in a relationship at the time.[27]

In 2001, Morissette was featured with Stephanie McKay on the Tricky song "Excess", which is on his album Blowback. Morissette released her fifth studio album, Under Rug Swept, in February 2002. For the first time in her career, she took on the role of sole writer and producer of an album. Her band, comprising Joel Shearer, Nick Lashley, Chris Chaney, and Gary Novak, played the majority of the instruments; additional contributions came from Eric Avery, Dean DeLeo, Flea, and Meshell Ndegeocello. Shortly after recording the album Morissette essentially fired this whole band by proposing a huge pay cut (at least 50% for most members) while offering the drummer, Gary Novak, a slightly smaller pay cut but an increase in work and responsibility. This effectively ended the band as it was, and an entirely new band was hired shortly after, featuring Jason Orme, Zac Rae, David Levita, and Blair Sinta, who have been with her since.

Under Rug Swept debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually going platinum in Canada and selling one million copies in the U.S.[9][35] It produced the hit single "Hands Clean", which topped the Canadian Singles Chart and received substantial radio play; for her work on "Hands Clean" and "So Unsexy", Morissette won a Juno Award for Producer of the Year.[36] A second single, "Precious Illusions", was released, but it did not garner significant success outside Canada or U.S. hot AC radio.

Later in 2002, Morissette released the combination package Feast on Scraps, which includes a DVD of live concert and backstage documentary footage directed by her and a CD containing eight previously unreleased songs from the Under Rug Swept recording sessions. Preceded by the single "Simple Together," it sold roughly 70,000 copies in the U.S. and was nominated for a Juno Award for Music DVD of the Year.[35][37]

Morissette hosted the Juno Awards of 2004 dressed in a bathrobe, which she took off to reveal a flesh-colored bodysuit, a response to the era of censorship in the U.S. caused by Janet Jackson's breast-reveal incident during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.[38] Morissette released her sixth studio album, So-Called Chaos, in May 2004. She wrote the songs on her own again, and co-produced the album with Tim Thorney and pop music producer John Shanks. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 chart to generally mixed critical reviews, and it became Morissette's lowest seller in the U.S.[35] The lead single, "Everything", achieved major success on adult top 40 radio in America and was moderately popular elsewhere, particularly in Canada, although it failed to reach the top forty on the U.S. Hot 100. Because the first line of the song includes the word asshole, American radio stations refused to play it, and the single version was changed to include the word nightmare instead.[38] Two other singles, "Out Is Through" and "Eight Easy Steps", fared considerably worse commercially than "Everything", although a dance mix of "Eight Easy Steps" was a U.S. club hit.

Morissette embarked on a U.S. summer tour with long-time friends and fellow Canadians Barenaked Ladies, working with the non-profit environmental organization Reverb.[39]

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Jagged Little Pill, Morissette released a studio acoustic version, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic, in June 2005. The album was released exclusively through Starbucks' Hear Music retail concept through their coffee shops for a six-week run. The limited availability led to a dispute between Maverick Records and HMV North America, who retaliated by removing Morissette's other albums from sale for the duration of Starbucks's exclusive six-week sale.[40][41] As of November, 2010, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic had sold 372,000 copies in the U.S.,[42] and a video for "Hand in My Pocket" received rotation on VH1 in America. The accompanying tour ran for two months in mid 2005, with Morissette playing small theatre venues. During the same period, Morissette was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.[43]

Morissette released the greatest hits albumAlanis Morissette: The Collection in late 2005. The lead single and only new track, a cover of Seal's "Crazy", was a U.S. adult top 40 and dance hit, but it achieved only minimal chart success elsewhere. A limited edition of The Collection features a DVD including a documentary with videos of two unreleased songs from Morissette's 1996 Can't Not Tour: "King of Intimidation" and "Can't Not." (A reworked version of "Can't Not" had also appeared on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.) The DVD also includes a ninety-second clip of the unreleased video for the single "Joining You". As of November, 2010, "The Collection" had sold 373,000 copies in the U.S., according to Soundscan.[42]

2006 marked the first year in Morissette's musical career without a single concert appearance showcasing her own songs, with the exception of an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in January when she performed "Wunderkind".

On April 1, 2007, Morissette released a tongue-in-cheek cover of The Black Eyed Peas's selection "My Humps", which she recorded in a slow, mournful voice, accompanied only by a piano. The accompanying YouTube-hosted video, in which she dances provocatively with a group of men and hits the ones who attempt to touch her "lady lumps," had received 16,465,653 views on 15 February 2009.[46] Morissette did not take any interviews for a time to explain the song, and it was theorized that she did it as an April Fools' Day joke.[47] Black Eyed Peas vocalist Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson responded by sending Morissette a buttocks-shaped cake with an approving note.[48] On the verge of the release of her latest album, she finally elaborated on how the video came to be, citing that she became very much emotionally loaded while recording her new songs one after the other and one day she wished she could do a simple song like "My Humps" in a conversation with Guy Sigsworth and the joke just took a life of its own when they started working on it.[46]

Morissette's seventh studio album, Flavors of Entanglement, which was produced by Guy Sigsworth, was released in mid 2008. She has stated that in late 2008, she would embark on a North American headlining tour, but in the meantime she would be promoting the album internationally by performing at shows and festivals and making television and radio appearances. The album's first single was "Underneath", a video for which was submitted to the 2007 Elevate Film Festival, the purpose of which festival was to create documentaries, music videos, narratives and shorts regarding subjects to raise the level of human consciousness on the earth.[50] On 3 October 2008, Morissette released the video for her latest single, "Not as We".[51]

In late 2003, Morissette appeared in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated as Charlie Jacobs, a death row inmate freed after proof surfaced that she was innocent. In April 2006, MTV News reported that Morissette would reprise her role in The Exonerated in London from May 23 until May 28.[55]

It was announced on Morissette's website that she will be starring in a film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth. Morissette will play Sylvia, an ordinary woman in unexpected remission from lymphoma. She said she was a "big fan" of Dick's books, which she called "poetic and expansively imaginative", and said she "feel[s] blessed to portray Sylvia, and to be part of this story being told in film"[cite this quote].

It was announced in May 2009 that Morissette had been cast in at least seven episodes of Weeds, playing Dr. Audra Kitson, a "no-nonsense obstetrician" who treats pregnant main character Nancy Botwin.[56] These episodes aired from June to August 2009.

In early 2010 Morissette returned to the stage, performing a one night engagement in An Oak Tree, an experimental play in Los Angeles. The performance was a sell out. In April 2010 Morissette was confirmed in the cast of Weeds season six, performing again her role as Dr. Audra Kitson.[57]

Morissette dated actor and comedian Dave Coulier, 15 years her senior, for a short time in the early 1990s.[58] In a 2008 interview with the Calgary Herald, Coulier claimed to be the ex-boyfriend who inspired Morissette's song "You Oughta Know".[59] Morissette, however, has maintained her silence on the subject of the song.[60]

In 2002, Morissette began dating Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds. The couple announced their engagement in June 2004.[59] In February 2007, representatives for Morissette and Reynolds announced that they had mutually decided to end their engagement.[61] Morissette has stated that her album Flavors of Entanglement was created out of her grief after the break-up, saying that "it was cathartic".[62]

On May 22, 2010, Morissette married rapper Mario “MC Souleye” Treadway in a private ceremony at their Los Angeles home.[63] In August 2010, it was announced that Morissette was pregnant with the couple's first child.[64] Ever Imre Morissette-Treadway, was born on December 25, 2010.[65][not in citation given]